Quote of the Week

"Elevate. Each day, live to elevate yourself, each day elevate one person. Make elevation your religion and you shall reach infinity."

~Yogi Bhajan

Green Goodness

Loving spring!  There's something magical about seeing the first fruit and vegetables grow, mature and ripen.  The picking of the first tomato is an annual cause for celebration in our household, and this event began in a small way today, with the picking of the first vine-ripened, totally organically grown cherry tomato!

First cherry tomato!  More vegetarian staples coming soon!

The first full-sized tomato-- ready to pick!

Two on this nice cluster are just starting to turn!

Baby green beans!

Cucumbers - blossoming but not quite showing fruit yet.

Cucumbers, beans and squash.

The first baby summer squash!

Peppers and eggplant.

Small bell peppers - won't be big enough to pick for several weeks.

Banana peppers - we've already harvested some of these!

More tomatos!

Baby grapefruit!  Fortunate to get them in this small tree's second year!

Baby lemon!

Basil.  I can taste the pesto already!

Home composting station.  Every leaf raked, every bit of yard waste, every fruit or vegetable peel or trimming, tea bags, coffee grounds, egg shells, etc, go in here, and are transformed into brown gold.  With lots of rich organic compost, there is no need for chemical fertilizers.  The plants love it, and happy plants make the best fruit!

Quote of the Week

"Feelings, whether of compassion or irritation, should be welcomed, recognized, and treated on an absolutely equal basis; because both are ourselves. The tangerine I am eating is me. The mustard greens I am planting are me. I plant with all my heart and mind. I clean this teapot with the kind of attention I would have were I giving the baby Buddha or Jesus a bath. Nothing should be treated more carefully than anything else. In mindfulness, compassion, irritation, mustard green plant, and teapot are all sacred."


— Zen masterThich Nhat Hanh (The Miracle of Mindfulness)

Running Green supports Meatless Monday, an initiative associated with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The goal of Meatless Monday is to help reduce meat consumption in order to improve public health and the health of the planet.


These delicious-looking recipes are published by the Meatless Monday initiative, and may be found at http://www.meatlessmonday.com/category/this-mondays-menu/.

Healthy News:
Why kids need recess and exercise
[CNN]

Weekly Running: May 9 through 15, 2011

Race Review - Samson Lonestar 5K Saturday, 14 May, 2011

Samson Lone Star 5K at the Gulf Terrace Hike & Bike Trail .

New best 5K time - 24:45. 16th place overall, 3rd place, male 41 and over age group.

On the way out...

I don't usually race from mid-May through the end of September in SE Texas, because it's usually just way too warm and humid. A freakishly late cool front came through Friday, leaving low humidity and a beautiful 55 degree Saturday morning. Friday evening after seeing the weather forecast, I decided on the spur of the moment to run this 5K event, and I'm glad I did. Finished 16th overall, and 3rd in the male 41 and above age group. Clock time was 24:45, 40 seconds better than my previous best 5K. Garmin time was 24:50. Mile splits were 8:02, 8:00, 8:02, 0:46 (0.1 mile @7:25). Finished into a fairly strong north wind.
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/85518243

Finish!

Yoga Journal - May Digital Edition Is Free!

In honor of Earth Day, Yoga Journal is offering a free electronic version of the May issue. No paper used or natural resources consumed!  http://www.yogajournal.com/digitaledition

Earth Day Message - "The Art of Mindful Living"

Instead of composing another rambling rant, like last year's Earth Day message (http://vern-running-green.blogspot.com/2010/04/earth-day-2010-40th-anniversary-april.html), I'd like to publish this passage from the Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh's amazing book, Peace Is Every Step.  He says it so much better than I can. This is the entire short chapter titled The Art of Mindful Living.

"Nature is our mother. Because we live cut off from her, we get sick. Some of us live in boxes called apartments, very high above the ground. Around us are only cement, metal, and hard things like that. Our fingers do not have a chance to touch the soil; we don’t grow lettuce anymore. Because we are so distant from our Mother Earth, we become sick. That is why we need to go out from time to time and be in nature. It is very important. We and our children should be in touch again with Mother Earth. In many cities, we cannot see trees—the color green is entirely absent from our view.


One day, I imagined a city where there was only one tree left. The tree was still beautiful, but very much alone, surrounded by buildings, in the middle of the city. Many people were getting sick, and most doctors did not know how to deal with the illness. But one very good doctor knew the causes of the sickness and gave this prescription to each patient. “Every day, take the bus to the center of the city to look at the tree. As you approach it, practice breathing in and out, and when you get there, hug the tree, breathing in and out for fifteen minutes, while you look at the tree, so green, and smell its bark, so fragrant. If you do that, in a few weeks, you will feel much better.”

The people began to feel better, but very soon there were so many people rushing to the tree that they stood in line for miles and miles. You know that people of our time do not have much patience, so standing three or four hours to wait to hug the tree was too much and they rebelled. They organized demonstrations in order to make a new law that each person could only hug the tree for five minutes, but of course that reduced the time for healing. And soon, the time was reduced to one minute, and the chance to be healed by our mother was lost. We could be in that situation very soon if we are not mindful. We must practice awareness of each thing we do if we want to save our Mother Earth, and ourselves and our children as well. For example, when we look into our garbage, we can see lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, and flowers. When we throw a banana peel into the garbage, we are aware that it is a banana peel that we are throwing out and that it will be transformed into a flower or a vegetable very soon. That is exactly the practice of meditation.


When we throw a plastic bag into the garbage, we know that it is different than a banana peel. It will take a long time to become a flower… That awareness alone helps us protect the Earth, make peace, and take care of life in the present moment and in the future. This is an act of peace, a basic kind of peace action.

When we throw a plastic disposable diaper into the garbage, we know that it takes even longer for it to become a flower, four hundred years or longer. Knowing that using these kinds of diapers is not in the direction of peace, we look for other ways to take care of our baby. Practicing breathing and contemplating our body, feelings, mind, and objects of mind, we practice peace in the present moment. This is living mindfully.

Nuclear waste is the worst kind of garbage.  It takes about 250,000 years to become flowers.  Forty of the fifty of the United States is already polluted by nuclear waste.  We are making the Earth an impossible place to live for ourselves and for many generations of children.  If we live in our present moment mindfully, we will know what to do and what not to do, and we will try to do things in the direction of peace."

Eat Local - Make Every Day Earth Day!

The Thanks to Meatless Monday for passing on this information!

The Eat Well Guide released this cool widget to help people eat local on Earth Day and everyday thereafter throughout the year. Eat Well Guide is a free online directory for anyone in search of fresh, locally grown and sustainably produced food in the United States and Canada. Include the food-finder widget (get the code below) on your website and/or blog, to provide your visitors with valuable sustainable food recommendations. Just type a zip code into the widget to find nearby sustainable restaurants, stores, farms and other producers from a growing list of over 23,000 vendors. Supporting sustainable agriculture is a delicious way to show your commitment to the earth 365 days a year.


Follow this link to copy the code for this or two other widget designs for your blog! http://www.eatwellguide.org/i.php?pd=Widgets

Training Tip of the Week

"Many elite athletes warm up for 60-90 minutes before they race to make sure they are ready to run fast right from the start. For most recreational athletes, some easy jogging, walking and stretching is probably enough. Determine a warm-up that works for you during your training."

~Today's Tip of the Day from Hal Higdon's Facebook page
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/halhigdon

I believe this one.  I'm light-years from being an elite athlete, either by ability or training.  However, I recently tried a gradual 15-minute warmup, going from walk, to fast walk, to slow jog, to easy run.  This worked better for me before a 5K race than my usual 5 minute easy run, and the result was a slight PR, even on a mending knee and only 2 weeks of marathon recovery . 

Meatless Monday

Running Green supports Meatless Monday, an initiative associated with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The goal of Meatless Monday is to help reduce meat consumption in order to improve public health and the health of the planet.


These delicious-looking recipes are published by the Meatless Monday initiative, and may be found at http://www.meatlessmonday.com/category/this-mondays-menu/.

Healthy News:
Want to Sharpen Your Mind? Drop a Few Pounds
[Time]

Weekly Training 11 - 17 April, 2011

(Graphic from my page at DailyMile.com.)


The week started strong and ended with a whimper.  Started with a good tempo run Tuesday, and a medium/long run Wednesday.  I planned an easy paced six for Thursday, but ended up running it at almost tempo pace again.  Wednesday evening, UPS delivered the new shoes I ordered, a pair of Saucony Kinvaras.  I'm working at developing the "Chi Running" form, and wanted to try one of the "minimalist" shoe designs to help facilitate a midfoot running form.  The Kinvaras were so light and flexible that the run seemed to take less effort, so I ran a little faster than I intended Thursday.  I did slow it down a little Saturday, and intended to do a longer run Sunday.  Saturday afternoon, building a fence gate, my hand slipped and I slightly punctured my left thumbnail with a screwdriver.  I still thought I'd run the next day, but by Sunday afternoon, the wound was still slowly seeping blood through the bandage.  I decided that it wasn't wise to run and elevate my HR to 150 bpm with even a small seeping wound.  All's well though.  By Sunday evening, bleeding had stopped.  I saw my doctor Monday morning and she gave me a tetanus shot and antibiotics.

Yoga streak continued, daily practice at 232 days.

YTD: 440.6 miles running, 147.1 miles cycling, 587.7 miles total.

Week: 27.0 running miles;  Month: 72.1 running miles.

Spring Transformation!

A sure sign of spring-- the garden's in business again.  We just observed the first few tiny green tomatoes!

We've had a mild spring, with no later-than-usual cooldowns.  We started our garden seedlings indoors in February, to have them ready for early outdoor planting.  And plenty of great compost from last season's vegetable and yard waste for the young plants to thrive on.  Organic gardening at it's best! 

It also serves as a timely reminder of the fundamental oneness of all that is, fitting perfectly with words from the great Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh:

"When we have a compost bin filled with organic material which is decomposing and smelly, we know that we can transform the waste into beautiful flowers.  At first, we may see the compost and flowers as opposite, but when we look deeply, we can see that the flowers already exist in the compost and the compost already exists in the flowers."

The unity of life.  Yesterday's compost is today's tomato.  Today's tomato is tomorrow's compost.  And so the cycle continues...

Food Rules Friday

Michael Pollan is an acclaimed author and whole food/heathy eating advocate. He is the author of the best selling "In Defense of Food" and "The Omnivore's Dillemma."


Rule # 29: "Eat like an omnivore."

"Whether or not you eat any animal foods, it's a good idea to try to add some new species, and not just new foods, to your diet- that is, new kinds of plants, animals, and fungi."

I really enjoy finding new foods, especially from plants.  The message is that variety is good!  Personally, I'm a vegetarian, not a vegan.  I don't eat meat, but I eat some animal products such as cheese, yogurt, and a few eggs.  The principle applies, whether you're vegan, vegetarian, flexitarian or omnivore.

Training Tip Thursday

Unless you feel really hungry, eating food before or during a workout or before a medium-distance race isn't necessary. A meal high in carbohydrates (such as pasta) the night before should get you through. Practice good nutrition while training. Forget those fad diets. A proper mix of 55 percent carbohydrates, 30 percent fat and 15 percent protein is best for fitness and for good health.

~Tip of the Day from Hal Higdon's Facebook page.

Quote of the Week - "Twenty-Four Brand-New Hours"

I've been reading the great Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh's amazing book, Peace is Every Step.  I'm only about halfway through, although it's fairly short and written in a very accessible style that makes for quick reading.  I'm taking my time, reading a few pages at a time, savoring them like fine wine, and trying to apply the concepts to daily life as I go.  He begins the book with these words that set the tone so well for all that follows:


"Every morning, when we wake up, we have twenty-four brand-new hours to live.  What a precious gift!  We have the capacity to live in a way that these twenty-four hours will bring peace, joy and happiness to ourselves and others.

     Peace is present right here and now, in ourselves and in everything we do and see.  The question is whether or not we are in touch with it.  We don't have to travel far away to enjoy the blue sky.  We don't have to leave our city or even our neighborhood to enjoy the eyes of a beautiful child.  Even the air we breathe can be a source of joy."   

Meatless Monday

Running Green supports Meatless Monday, an initiative associated with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The goal of Meatless Monday is to help reduce meat consumption in order to improve public health and the health of the planet.

These delicious-looking recipes are published by the Meatless Monday initiative, and may be found at http://www.meatlessmonday.com/category/this-mondays-menu/.

Healthy News:
Vegetarians at Lower Heart Disease, Diabetes Risk
[Reuters]

Weekly Training April 4 - 10, 2011

(Graphic from my page at DailyMile.com.)

Getting (hopefully) back on track with my weekly running/training summary, not that it's likely to be of much interest to anyone else, but part of the purpose of this blog continues to be as a training journal.

A pretty uneventful week, no big miles, just building back gradually in this fourth recovery week after marathon.  Trying to be cautious and allow further healing of a right knee that still isn't 100% after a January injury.  With the exception of a tempo pace run Tuesday, everything else was at moderate comfortable pace.

Continuing with weights & core work Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.  My current favorite core routine is doing crunches lying on my back on a stability ball.  I like the ball mcuh better than either the floor or the bench.

Yoga practice continues to grow; made 225 consecutive days on April 10.  Durations are progressing also.  Early in this streak, I practiced mainly in the morning for 10 to 20 minutes, with an occasional evening practice.  Lately, I've practiced 15 to 25 minutes both morning and evening on most days, with occasional longer practice.  I'm not forcing it.  It has been a natural progression because the more I practice, the better I feel.

YTD: 413.6 miles running, 147.1 miles cycling, 560.7 miles total.

Quote of the Week

"Drink your tea slowly and reverently,
as if it is the axis
on which the world earth revolves
- slowly, evenly, without
rushing toward the future;
Live the actual moment.
Only this moment is life."

~zen master Thich Nhat Hanh

Catching Up

I've done a poor job lately of updating this blog.  Trying to get back on track!

PR - Sea Rim Striders Spring 5K - March 26, 2011

Sea Rim Striders Spring 5K - 25:25, 8:12 pace. 19th place out of 109.
Garmin data and map: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/75139878
Results: http://www.searimstriders.net/results/2011-Spring5K-OV.html

PR? At first, I thought I'd missed it by a few seconds. I didn't remember the exact seconds of my best time, but remembered 8:14 as my PR pace. Garmin showed my average at 8:17. I finished this race 25:25 by the clock, 25:27 by Garmin. After I got home, I looked up my previous best time and found it was 25:34. So, if the course distance was an accurate 3.1 miles, this was a PR. Garmin showed the distance 3.07, which may be within expected measurement variation of 3.1. I'm going to claim it.

At first, I had no intention of going for it. At the starting line, I told my friend Jeremy that with a still tweaky knee and only two weeks of marathon recovery, I was going to treat this as just a "fun run." But after starting out, I felt too good to not give it a try. I think it really helped to do a slow, longer warmup pre-race.

I normally warm up with 4 or 5 minutes of easy jogging.  That's enough to warm up, but not enough to expend a significant amount of energy needed in the race itself.  However I found recently that my knee responds better with a slower, more gradual warmup, and I modified my aproach slightly.  I just warmed up from a walk to a brisk walk to a slow jog to an easy run pace. About 12 minutes of walking, 3 minues of jogging and 2 minutes of running.  Total warmup: 1.2 miles - 17 minutes.

Yoga Day 200: Surya Namaskar

Many of my runner/yogi friends on Dailymile have been great sources of encouragement as I started out to see if I could sustain a daily yoga practice for 30 days in the month of September, 2010.  At the time, I had no thought of being able to stretch the daily streak to months.  On March 15, I was touched by the gesture of my friend Rose, who organized a number of other friends to symbolically celebrate my 200th consecutive day with 20 Sun Salutations, each in their own locations.

So on the special day, March 15, 2011, there was no way that I wasn't going join in.  My morning practice for this day was 20 Sun Salutations, in 4 cycles of:
3 Sun Salutation A + 2 Sun Salutation B.

Namaste.

Gusher Marathon Video

This was video from the Gusher Marathon and Half Marathon from our local newspaper's website.  My three seconds of fame start at 1:06 of this video, as I come up on the right-hand side, cross in front of the camera and disappear at 1:09 (in red shorts and white shirt - #4076).

The Gusher Marathon - March 12, 2011

The Gusher Marathon - 26.2 miles - 5:13:27
Garmin data and map: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/72660419
Results: http://www.iaapweb.com/results/11/03_12_2011_marathon.htm#55-59%20Male

When I hurt my knee during this cycle of marathon training, I drastically changed my expectations.  At first, I thought I'd have to drop out of this race.  I took most of two weeks off from running, during what should have been peak training weeks.  During several of the final training weeks, I trained lighter than normal, substituting cycling minutes for some of my running miles.  It was a trade-off.  If I rested enough to heal completely, I'd have been so undertrained that I'd have no chance of lasting the distance.  If I tried to run my scheduled training miles, my knee would have been in no shape to run at all.  So I tried to strike a balance between the two, and revise my goal downward from PR to simply finishing.  However, the best the balanced approach could yield was to get me to race day both slightly undertrained and underhealed.

As I feared, this race got ugly, was 28 minutes longer than last year's marathon PR, but at least was a finish. Although my knee had made great improvement in the preceding weeks, I knew going in that I was undertrained and not 100% healed. I had almost no pain on my last few training runs, but the runs were short, and that allowed me to deceive myself into thinking the knee was farther along than it was. I even had a few taper-induced delusions of a possible PR. I'd considered possible pacing scenarios, and thought I might be able to comfortably average around 10:30 pace through the halfway point, and assess the situation from there. Even if I had to back off to the low 11's after that, it would be possible to finish a few seconds under last year's effort. The first half went pretty well, but the knee started getting a little sore around 12 miles, and got worse from there. I still managed to keep on track for a possible PR through about 18 miles.  It all came apart at about 18 ½, and by 19, a PR possibility was gone and it was just a matter of survival. I walked more than I ran in miles 19 through 21, got a small second wind around 22, and found a slow jog pace that made the knee hurt less than either running or walking. This pace, plus a few short walk breaks, brought me home. Coming around the final bend, I pulled together what little I had left, and tried to hit the finish chute looking better than I felt. It wasn't pretty, but I'll take it.

Ironically, even with my relatively slow finish, I later found that I'd taken a 3rd place age group trophy.  Only 5 men in my age group ran, and I at least finished before two of them!

The mile 26 sign was such a welcome sight!

After the finish, with two local running friends, Dailymilers Will and Jeremy Fermo. 

Daily Yoga - Half Year, Full Circle

My yoga practice for this evening: "The Primary Series - Express"

 As a retrospective on this 182nd day of daily yoga practice, I looked back in my online workout journal  (at dailymile.com) to the first day of this streak, August 28, 2010. I remember I felt like I'd outgrown the "beginner" yoga sequences I'd been practicing for about a year, was looking for some intermediate level videos to explore, and had come across the videos in the Yoga Today YouTube channel. On that day, I tried my first of those videos, a shorter version of the normally 1-plus hour Ashtanga Primary Series, "The Primary Series - Express," at http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=yogatoday#p/u/33/LP9IFX-Agt4

I loved this sequence from the beginning, and have returned to it many times in the last 26 weeks, like an old and trusted friend. On first try, I struggled a little with some of the moves and to keep up with the pace of the flow. After repeating many times, I don't struggle with it, but it remains an enjoyable and reasonably challenging practice. It seemed fitting, on this 182nd day, to come full circle and return again to the practice that it all began with.  It felt very good.  Namaste.

Bring Them Back

I support the return of the Parthenon Marbles to their righful ownership in Greece. If you agree, please consider reposting this video or forwarding to your friends. www.bringthemback.org

A Valentine's Day Message

Tuesday Quote of the Week

“Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.”

~Buddha

Meatless Monday

Running Green supports Meatless Monday, an initiative associated with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The goal of Meatless Monday is to help reduce meat consumption in order to improve public health and the health of the planet.


These delicious-looking recipes are published by the Meatless Monday initiative, and may be found at http://www.meatlessmonday.com/category/this-mondays-menu/.

Weekly Training: January 24 - 30

(The graphic is from my page at dailymile.com.)


This was better than the previous week, but still just trying to hang on to as much conditioning as possible while this knee continues to recover.  It looks like a lot of miles, but only six of Saturday's eleven were running; the rest were cycling.  However, the cycyling was much less knee strain, and I'll take what I can get.

Don't get me wrong.  Cycling is great, it's just not comparable mile-to-mile with running.  With that in mind, instead of substituting cyling miles for running miles, I substituted cycling minutes for running miles at a ratio of 10 minutes of hard cycling for each scheduled running mile.  The rationale for this conversion was based on run training at roughly 10 minutes/mile.

By the end of the week, knee soreness was gradually improving, and I'm optimistic about working more running miles back into the mix.  Daily yoga practice is now up to 156 days.

YTD: 98.2 miles running, 104.3 miles cycling, 202.5 miles total.